Arguments

Israel's National Religious Party died this past Tuesday after a long illness. Its demise was almost unnoticed. The once powerful Israeli political party that represented the philosophy of Religious Zionism, the Miflaga Datit Leumi (its Hebrew name, commonly abbrieviated as "Mafdal," the word emblazoned on the election poster pictured above right), was created in 1956 and participated in every Israeli government coalition between that year and 1992, regardless of whether Labor or Likud led the government. Its importance as a coalition partner was attributable to the roughly 12 Knesset seats it ...

1) Mafdal had become a one issue party that reduced all of Judaism to the struggle for Eretz Yisrael, according to one specific line (Merkaz, Merkaz, Merkaz et Eliyahi Inc). This, in my opinion, constituted a distortion of Judaism, Zionism and Common Sense. 2) Mafdal didn't advocate a Modern Orthodoxy with which I could personally identify. In its more bourgeois eras, it was religiously flaccid (as evidenced by the the tragic failure of its key educational institutions to develop any concept as to the deeper meaning of 'Torah ve-Hokhma'). The idea that deep involvement in the world demanded a ...